The present invention relates to semiconductor fabrication facilities, and more specifically, to a method and system for evaluating semiconductor clients.
Since the invention of the integrated circuit (IC), the semiconductor industry has been growing dramatically to today's ultra-large scale IC's (ULSIC's) by technological progress not only in materials, design, and processing, but also in fabrication automation. Advances in IC technology, coupled with a movement towards mass production, provide a driving force for automation. Automation brings higher quality, shorter cycle time and lower cost, which in return drive broader IC applications and higher market demand.
Semiconductor technologies are complicated because they involve systems, design, equipment, material, manufacturing, testing, and packaging. Another reason for the complexity of semiconductor technologies is that they involve so many diverse technical areas including logic, analog, mixed signal, radio frequency (RF), memory (such as dynamical random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), and magnetic random access memory (MRAM)), micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS), and high power. Semiconductor technologies are now regarded as being more mature since the semiconductor industry has well defined and accepted standards including standard cells and standard manufacturing technologies which are further enhanced by standard equipment. The increased complexity, maturation and scaling progress in semiconductor technologies has brought a trend of global coordination in which every device starting from concept through specification, design, manufacturing, packaging and testing all the way down to final product may go through many semiconductor companies, each of which focuses on a specific area. For example, an IC design house or fabless company focuses on IC design, and a foundry focuses on wafer manufacturing.
A semiconductor manufacturer could have a very large portfolio of clients or customers. Each customer may have its own portfolio of products which can range broadly in product types, technologies, volumes, schedules and other factors. For a semiconductor manufacture to best serve the interests of its customers, it is desirable for the semiconductor manufacturer to know its customers' technologies, production types, volumes, schedules, and trends.
What is needed is a system and method to assist semiconductor manufacturers in evaluating customers according to their needs efficiently and quantitatively.